1. What is Information Technology? Describe it with its social impacts.
Information Technology is a modern concept or methodology of communication. It is the combined form of Information and Communication Technology, which is highly used for the information flow and in many other fields. IT has made the world closer day by day. One can easily send and receive the message throughout the world within a second. It has been widely used in education, industry, banks, research center, hospitals, etc. It is being used as learning and teaching tool in the sector of education. Distant learning has become possible due to the advancement of IT. It has been highly used in the industries to control quantity and quality of the product. It is equally used for the management in hospitals and for the treatment of the patients. IT is being used in the sector of animation and other entertainment. Scientists can use computer or IT for their research and experiment. Space technology has become possible due to the IT. Thus it has much such a positive impact on the society. But it has some negative impacts, too. As the use of IT is increasing day by day, the cyber crimes are also increasing. Cyber criminals can easily steal others’ information or data, they can disclose other secrecy, and they can easily spread the virus in the network and disturbs the social peace and security.
Information Security
As we know, In a network or cyber space there is always threat of cyber attacks which may leads to loss and damages of our precious data and information. It is always necessary to be aware of such malicious activity. We need to adopt different measures while using computer from such intentional and accidental activities. Thus, information security refers to the process of protecting our network infrastructure from unauthorized access, misuse, modification, destruction or any malfunction. We can use several physical and software preventive measures to protect ourselves from such unethical activities. Information security helps to create a secure environment for computers, users and programs.
Information security can mitigate security threats and security attacks. Security threats is possible danger that might cause unwanted activities in our computer system to breach security and thus cause possible harm whereas security attack is an attempt to gain unauthorized access to destroy, expose, steal or alter others valuable data and information. This attacks can be triggered by malicious application such as viruses, spyware, Trojan horse, WORMS etc.
Information security are built around three major objectives:
Confidentiality: It means information are available for only the authorized individual, that means individual or any other system cannot use or process others information without proper authorization.
Integrity: It indicates accuracy and completeness of data and information which means without proper authorization data and information cannot be tampered.
Availability: It means information must be always available as per the requirement of the user. It generally refers to accessing out valuable data and information whenever required with in no time.
Cryptography
The cryptography is derived from the Greek word which means “Secret writing”. Cryptography is the art and science of hiding information. It provides security for information. It is used for providing secure communication between individuals, government agencies and military force. Cryptography mostly refers to Encryption and Decryption. Encryption is the process of converting plaintext that is message to unreadable format. So that anyone who tries to see the message cannot read the original message. The plain text are converted into unreadable text using special algorithm and keys. The unreadable text is called cipher text. These cipher text are again converted into readable form through the process of decryption. Decryption is the reverse process of encryption. Sometimes, encryption is also termed as encoding or encipher and its reverse process i.e. decryption is also termed as decoding or decipher.
2. What is Digital Divide?
Digital Divide is the term used for the gap between the computer literate and illiterate people. Or it can be said that it is a division between technical and non-technical man powers in the field. IT is the modern technology and for the use of this technology, one can have sound knowledge of computers. But still there are a great number of people, who do not know the computers’ operations. They do not understand the computer related terms. This difference or gap is called digital divide. First, this term came into practice in the mid of 1990s by political speeches and news media. This division is increasing day by day in between urban area people and rural area people, educated and uneducated, rich and poor and so on. So it has become a global issue and governments are trying to bridge this gap.
3. What are the computer ethics or cyber ethics?
The computer ethics or the cyber ethics are the set of moral principles or the codes of conduct, which should be strictly followed by the computer professionals. The intention of the computer or cyber ethics is to avoid the criminal activities through the use of computers. The following are some examples of computer ethics:
i. Do not use other’s password
ii. Do not steal other’s information
iii. Do not use computers to harm others
iv. Do not disclose other’s secrecy
v. Do not spread virus in the network
vi. Do not copy licensed software, which you have not paid
vii. Do not alter other’s data
viii. Do not take possession to other people’s intellectual property
ix. Do not misuse electronic transaction
x. Do not use computer to bear false witness, etc.
4. What is cyber crime? List out some examples of cyber crimes.
The act of misusing computers, Internet or other electronic media is called cyber crime. As the use of Information Technology is increasing, the act of cyber crime is also increasing day by day. The following are some examples of cyber crime:
i. Misuse of computers
ii. Spreading virus
iii. Stealing other’s information
iv. Pirating licensed software
v. Disclosing of other’s secrecy
vi. Misuse of electronic transaction and electronic media
vii. Rude and vulgar comments in Internet on racial, communal and others
viii. Alteration of other data without permission
ix. Spying others’ information
x. Cracking or hacking
xi. Password guessing
xii. Salami saving and data diddling
xiii. Forgery
xiv. DOS attack, etc.
5. What is Cyber Law? Define and write some provisions of it.
The law regarding the use of computers is called Cyber Law. It highly concerns with the misuse of the computers, Internet and other electronic media, which are specially used for information flow. Cyber ethics just suggest not committing computer crimes or cyber crimes but the cyber law strictly defines the punishment in case of violation of the laws or cyber principles. Actually the cyber law is in practice to support the cyber ethics. Nepal Government also has issued the Cyber Law on 11th Falgun, 2061 (18th March 2005) as “The Electronic Transaction Ordinance, 2005”.
It has the following provisions:
· Electronic and Digital Signature Law
· Intellectual Property Law
Copyright Law
Trademark Law
Semiconductor Law
Patent Law
· Telecommunication Law
· Data Protection and Privacy Law
6. Explain the different objectives of IT Policy of Nepal.
The IT policies of Nepal are:
· To declare IT as a high priority sector of government and make it practical
· To establish knowledge based industries to increase employment
· To make public information and service delivery inclusive and effective through the philosophy of e-government
· To increase the productive use of IT in social, economic and business organizations
· To increase access to IT related international attempts and developments
· To make Government Integrated Data Center (GIDC) effective in order to develop as an infrastructure for IT development
